Caught In The Middle. Gayle Roper
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think about me. Do I have a fever?”
I shook my head. “You do not.”
She didn’t believe me. “But I know I’m getting sick.”
“Merry!” Don’s voice boomed across the room. “Come here. And, Mac, I need you, too.”
Thank you, Don! I eagerly left the sick bay.
The News office space was cramped, old and reeked of smoke in spite of the fact that no one had been allowed to smoke in the room for at least five years. The desks were battered and scarred, the linoleum pattern had worn off decades ago and the file cabinets were dented and scratched. Only the lighting and the computer system were modern, and they were both state-of-the-art.
The other highly unique aspect of the newsroom was the greenery. Plants sat on every available surface and on some they shouldn’t. And every plant was lush and full and in better health than I was. I could only imagine what Don paid a service to tend these beauties, though why he wanted them in the first place, I didn’t know.
I dodged Larry’s and Edie’s desks, the fiche machine and the soda and coffee machines. The latter two were placed near Don so he could keep an eye on loiterers. A Wandering Jew draped over the soda machine in such rampant health that I always thought of Little Shop of Horrors and the plant that ate people. I gave the machine and its decoration wide berth.
“You heard?” Don asked as I approached.
“About Trudy?” I nodded. “Jolene just told me.”
I stared in surprise at my boss’s large, cluttered desk. Cluttered? Don? Usually he sat in organized splendor in front of the huge window that looked down from the second-floor editorial offices onto the business district of Amhearst. If it weren’t for the incontrovertible proof of the daily issues of The News, I’d think Don never worked, because his desk never showed it. Except now.
“I want you to do the personality obit. Contact family, friends, get some good quotes. You know. Mac will do the political and public-service analysis and contact the police and hospital.”
“The police?” I said, startled.
“They’re involved because it’s an unwitnessed death. Mere form,” said Mac. “I have to talk to them about your body, anyway.”
“It’s not my body!”
Mac grinned. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Mac, come on!”
“From what I hear, he seems about the right age for you.” He gave his trademark leer.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be offended by a joke about a dead man. “How old was he? And how old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know about you, but he was twenty-five.” Mac glanced at the notebook he had in his hand. “He lived at 594 Lyme Street with his mother, Liz, and worked as a grease jockey at Taggart’s.”
“So I got him at Taggart’s garage?”
“I don’t think the cops are certain yet, but that seems to be the theory they’re working with.”
“Excuse me, you two,” said Don curtly, “but I think we were talking about Trudy.”
I nodded, staring at my boss with interest. His hair was actually mussed where he had run a hand through it, revealing his incipient bald spot rather cruelly. I knew that if he could see himself, he’d be upset.
Don shuffled some papers into a haphazard pile. “Your articles about Trudy will be the leads in tomorrow’s edition. I want them by nine a.m.” He made a frustrated sound. “I hate it when a story breaks too late for the day’s edition.”
“Had Trudy known your feelings,” said Mac harshly, “I’m certain she would have arranged things differently.”
Don looked startled, like a mastiff bitten by a toy poodle. “You know I didn’t mean it that way, Mac. You know I respected Trudy. Now get to work, both of you.”
Mac and I turned away together, Mac still scowling. We walked across the office together, or as together as you can walk when there’s only enough room for one person at a time between the furniture. When we reached his desk, he grabbed his coat from the back of his chair.
“Any chance of dinner to talk over this case?” he asked as he stuffed his arms in the sleeves.
“Which case?” I asked.
“Either one’s okay with me,” he said, jettisoning the scowl and smiling with great charm. “It’s the company I’m interested in.”
I didn’t doubt that for an instant, and I was equally sure he wouldn’t want to stop with dinner. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m busy tonight.”
He looked at me skeptically, but I just smiled sweetly. I wasn’t about to tell him that my business was a rehearsal at church. I knew what he’d think of that.
Mac’s eyes slid over my shoulder and hardened as he looked at Don.
“He’s one cold fish,” Mac said. “A real iceberg.”
I turned and looked again at Don’s mussed hair and cluttered desk. I didn’t know about iceberg. I thought he was distressed and trying not to show it. It just leaked out in spite of himself. When I turned to say so, Mac was already rushing out the back door, scarf streaming over his shoulder.
I shrugged and went to my desk, thinking about the disadvantages of being new in town. Who should I call about Trudy? What if I called someone and he hadn’t heard yet, and I had to break the news to him? I shivered at that terrible thought.
To put such a possibility off as long as possible, I clicked my way into The News’s e-library and typed Trudy’s name. I wasn’t surprised at the wealth of information I found, but most was more what Mac would use than what I needed. Still, here and there I found items that spoke of her as a woman, not a politician or a lawyer.
Next I skimmed the paper’s electronic archives, but they only went back to 1988. I moved to FotoWeb and looked at photos of a vibrant and lovely woman. I was stopped cold by a particularly riveting shot of Trudy in an evening gown, dancing at the annual hospital gala, laughing at something her partner had said.
I rose abruptly and went to the file drawers against the far wall. I pushed the huge jade plant sitting on top back against the wall and opened the M drawer, pulling out the McGilpin file. In these old clips, I should find names as well as some good background information for my piece. I returned to my desk and began reading. The clipping service had done a good job; there was plenty of material available.
Trudy was a local girl, raised in Amhearst, a graduate of Amhearst High School where she was president of her senior class and star of the spring musical. In the pictures of the musical, she looked fresh and pretty, her young face eager and alive. “A glowing talent,” the review of the play read. “Amhearst’s own Julie Andrews.”
Since the writer of the review was a woman named Alice McGilpin, I suspected a strong case of family prejudice.
Trudy attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, no mean feat for a small-town girl who was to be her family’s first college graduate. She received her law degree with honors from Dickinson Law School. When she returned to Amhearst, she joined the local law firm of Grassley and Jordan, now Grassley, Jordan and McGilpin, where she developed a specialty in divorce and family issues.
Perhaps, I thought, dealing with all the tensions and hatreds between people who had promised to love each other forever had been enough to keep her from marrying.
Picture after picture showed how active in community affairs Trudy had been, sitting on the boards of the YWCA and the hospital and chairing the local United Way drive. She was in the final year of her first three-year term as mayor and had been planning to run again. A popular mayor, she undoubtedly would have won easily.
There